As a member of the planning committee and Family History Center staff, I have some local news to share today.
The Wilmette Family History Center in
Wilmette, Illinois is hosting a Family History Fair on Saturday, March 22, 2014.
The family history center is located inside a local church at the same
address. The fair will be held at this location.
It is with respect and hope for increased community
collaboration that we invite the community to attend. Registration
information will be forthcoming.
We invite
any societies to ask your experienced members or staff whether any are
interested in speaking at this event. Those who express interest before
the end of January 2014 will be considered. You may have those who you
feel are good candidates respond at wilmette.fhfair2014@gmail.com
There are several time-slots open for local
speakers for lectures. This is a free fair for the community, and we are
unable to compensate speakers. Projection, laptops, and speakers will be set up for speakers to use.
I've been checking every week for about a month to see if our new cable Internet was installed in the Family History Center. On Sunday, it was up and working. I clocked it several times at 15-25 mbps, a huge improvement from the DSL we were using. As I understand it, the center director and others were requesting an upgrade for over a year. I was lucky to have only moved into the area four months before the upgrade. The out of date software and hardware of the computers still makes them at least twice as slow as using my laptop WiFi right next to them. That is a different problem though.
Many Family History Centers have Internet problems and FamilySearch has recognized this in a blog post to center directors. Directors are instructed to test their speed and if it is below 2 mbps, to go ahead and request an upgrade. If you have this problem in your center, you might print the blog post and a report from a speed test you run, and turn it into the appropriate people with your request for an upgrade.
People for Better Pennsylvania Historical Records Access (PaHR-Access) posted the following announcement on their Facebook page today:
Our FamilySearch source stated the following:
"We have begun discussing a cooperative project with the New Jersey
state archives. This would include vital and state censuses and other
records. They have a concern with revenue and we are trying to find a
good solution to help them. Ancestry is also very interested. - This is a
complex issue and we are trying to find a model that meets our
respective mandate. I have confidence we will find the right model
eventually. The archives is open and is an eager participant in our
discussions." Click here to see the post as it appears on Facebook. Enduring Legacy Genealogy continues to support records access for genealogists. If you become aware of any records access discussions or action points please share. I will be glad to help spread the word.
With the budget cuts in state and national budgets necessitated by these hard economic times, there are many archives nearly forced to shut their doors. A most recent example is that of the Georgia state archives.
FamilySearch is working hard to let all archives know that they are available and willing to help. The primary purposes of any archive are records preservation and access. With funds being cut so low in some places, both are threatened.
Any archive who is willing to consult with FamilySearch is being offered free help in any or all of the following:
Image Capture
Digital Conversion of Microfilm
Indexing
Access
Preservation
In return, FamilySearch would like to keep a copy of the records to preserve indefinitely at no cost. They would also like to make it available for free on FamilySearch.org. For organizations who want to restrict records access to a specific group, or location, they are happy to create a customized contract. It sounds too good to be true, but as a result of earlier partnerships billions of historic records are already on FamilySearch.org.
To learn more, simply go to FamilySearch.org and click on the Archivists link in the RESOURCES section on the bottom of the page.
FamilySearch is the largest genealogy organization in the world.
FamilySearch is a nonprofit, volunteer-driven organization sponsored by
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Millions of people use
FamilySearch records, resources, and services to learn more about their
family history. To help in this great pursuit, FamilySearch and its
predecessors have been actively gathering, preserving, and sharing
genealogical records worldwide for over 100 years. Patrons may access
FamilySearch services and resources for free at FamilySearch.org or
through more than 4,600 family history centers in 132 countries,
including the main Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah.
In 2005 we walked into the cemetery which just recently had been bought by new owners after many years of overgrowth and see the typical sunken graves with their toppled stones clothed in foliage.
I recall seeing some piles of stones bulldozed aside at the time, but back then I did not have the confidence to speak up. I feel bad that I have not done more, sooner. I also regret not getting more pictures than what I have. Sadly, this same process has continued all the way into the present and there are no signs that it will stop.
In a day and age when a Facebook petition can end a story telling stroll through a local cemetery, it is sad that this unethical, disgusting, bulldozing treatment of our ancestors final resting places on O'Donnell Street can go by with only a faint cry--with no definitive action and nothing has changed.
Several people have voiced their disdain for the treatment of this once majestic cemetery.
It is remarkable that even a paranormal activity group has begun to speak up online regarding the terrible condition and care of the cemetery. The slideshow is rather long. Minute 5:00 and 5:50 showcase some of the piles of rubble commonly seen.
If this doesn't work, try the link: http://youtu.be/wtzYkCzNauM
The Paranormal Research and Investigation Society who produced this film has some insightful comments one the YouTube page with this video, which includes the following:
"Maryland's Department of Corrections brought prison trustees out to help
clean some of the cemetery. But this place is an utter disgrace. As new
burials are accepted, odler sections are bulldozed haphazardly, and
without reason."
A flickr search for pictures of this cemetery reveals several hundred results, many of which reveal the poor conditions.
This has been a problem for many years and many people have complained. Again I ask, why does a stroll around a cemetery get shut down while bulldozing our ancestors graves is overlooked?
If you agree please leave comments here, on the sites mentioned, write your own blog posts, go to the cemetery and save your ancestors headstones before they all get bulldozed up... do something!
Last week BYU-Idaho finalized the approval process for an Applied Associates degree in Family History.
This degree will be offered completely online. It is scheduled to be developed over the next couple years, with a couple courses being introduced each semester. The degree is designed to help students prepare for accreditation as a professional genealogist.
Please await the addition of this degree to the catalog.
Several times this month I have come across websites that were temporarily down. In at least three of those I was trying to learn more about genealogy. The GenealogyGuys.com, BillionGraves.com, and Baltimore County Public Library websites were all down for different reasons at different times. The last website mentioned is down at the time I'm writing this post due to power failure during hurricane Irene.
So is it time to give up on Internet research and go back to the caveman days of visiting these places in person? No. That will not work. These websites are compilations of data not easily accessible in any one physical place. As far as I know, the Genealogy Guys do not have their own public library of knowledge at any physical address which I can visit. BillionGraves is a compilation of the collection efforts of thousands of volunteers visiting cemeteries world-wide. The Baltimore County Public Library has a ProQuest portal which my library card gives me free access to. There I can get more digitized issues of the Baltimore Sun for free than I can anywhere else... okay there is an "easy" fix for that one. I could go to the Maryland Law Library in Annapolis to look at the microfilms of the paper. That is what I did before ProQuest. My point is that the Internet provides resources that not only make access easier, but provide access to data in ways that make the old way almost obsolete.
With the prevelence of researcher dependence upon the Internet along with a higher demand for records access, is it really acceptable for a website to go down for a few hours? I do not think it is. Granted, there may always be more disasters (natural or otherwise), but there are some good ways to at least alleviate the hosting problem. First, we must determine what the problem is. In the cases I am aware of the root problem was a power outage or a hosting service failure. In our day of cloud computing, with scalable hosting services, websites can maintain an online presence on servers in multiple locations. That way if one host has a server go down for any reason--including power outage--another server can pick up the slack. Then there is a question of cost effectiveness. Perhaps is should be the responsibility of cloud providers to offer back-up hosting at a price within reach of small businesses, two man teams, and public libraries. Maybe the Congress should make legislation requiring websites to have at least one back up server online which traffic would automatically be directed to in case of an outage. Some of these thoughts may seem a little extravagant, but after all we are in an age of convenience.
At least I can still go to the Facebook page for each website and ask if anyone else noticed the website failure. I did that in all three cases unless it was already explained on the Facebook page. That is a nice way to keep informed of the issues, assuming Facebook isn't down.
About a half hour ago, in the middle of a beautiful Pennsylvania day I felt my house shake for several seconds. It was like nothing I felt here before so I was beginning to be worried. I even went outside to see if our rather large evergreens fell onto the house. Well, I think I will turn on the news. :)
NOTE:The quotes are an extract from the July 30, 2011 article "Mormon documents digitized: Original records to be moved to Annapolis," http://www.delmarvanow.com/article/20110730/LIFESTYLE/107300349. Unless otherwise noted all quotes come from Gary Miller, Somerset County Register of Wills for Maryland. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as the Mormons, sent a 2-person FamilySearch team to Somerset County, Maryland last year to digitize the records of the Register of Wills office. Some of the Register of Will office's documents were copied to Annapolis previously, but the copying was incomplete. The cost to digitize the records of their office was estimated to run into the tens of thousands. In about four months, last summer, the FamilySearch team digitized the holdings of the entire office from the earliest records in the 1600's to 1940. Currently the digitized work is being organized and indexed according to Miller. "The Mormon work should come back to me this time next summer," Miller said.
Help index records for FamilySearch @ https://familysearch.org/volunteer/indexing Other than the usual digitizing and indexing FamilySearch provides at no cost Miller was impressed that "the group working in Salt Lake City is taking every document and linking it to relevant documents whenever they could. Some papers that seem to have been lost or misplaced from files or cases, or appear obscure, will be associated with a number that corresponds with a will."
He was so impressed with the team's work that he recommended it to the rest of his state: "Hopefully, in due time, the Mormons will do every office in Maryland."
As for the benefit to his office and those who come searching for data Miller said:
"This is good for the public because the next step is to provide public access to every document that this office had (prior to 1940). The original documents were so fragile I wouldn't let the public handle them. Soon they will be able to see stuff they once couldn't have."
"We are going to incorporate all of the images and index information they are sending us and put them [in] our system so you can sit down at the public computer here and pull up every document we have up to 1940."
Since 2007 genealogists have come together under the organizational head of PaHR-Access for the purpose of making Pennsylvania Vital Records open for genealogical research.
Last session the bill made it unanimously past the PA Senate Public Health and Welfare Committee for the first time (September 2010) before the 2 year legislative session ended.
Half way through the first year of this new session our bill has reached that same point. For this I am thankful!
June 8: PA Senate Bill 361's First Consideration on the floor of the state senate.
Maryland Archives went digital, no more microfilm printers
I noticed when I was at the Maryland Archives yesterday that the microfilm printers were not being used. I thought, "Great! Now we can get something done." Then we noticed a sign. It went something like this:
Due to cost of microfilm printer maintenance this service has been discontinued and printing must be done from the computers in the search room. Type in a film number to see if it has been digitized. If not, file a digitization request which will be completed in approximately 1 hour...
We went to the front entrance desk to set up our printing account. You get a Patron # and choose a pin. Every time you find a page you want and click print you will type your Patron # and pin. It subtracts from a pre-paid amount which can be added to the account in multiples of $5. One of my research partners and I shared an account. Each copy is $1. Those who are familiar with the archives will remember microfilm copies were 50 cents and while this %100 price increase may seem steep to some I felt it was a small price to pay for the modernized system.
I was unable to find any press releases or information about the digitization process at the Maryland State Archives website or anywhere else online for that matter. I hope readers and bloggers who read this will help spread the news about the changes.
Even though most of the digitized records are not online, to me, this seems like a huge step towards getting it there. The records that are online are mostly browsable only, with no index provided. Finding the records you want takes a lot of patience both with the website and with browsing the records. You can use the same page to find the film numbers you need for your search at the archives to find any online copies of the records you want. From the main page, clicking "Family Historians" and then clicking "How to find specific records" will take you to the best place I know of to find what the archives has.
Go to the Archives page and you will see there have been a couple more cemeteries added. Two more have been announced, so keep a look out for more, especially if you had ancestors in York or Adams Co. PA
Cemeteries are a favorite place for many genealogists. We love to find out about those who have gone before us, though we often tire of being in front of a microfilm reader or computer screen for hours on end.
A walk in the cemetery is just the kind of break a passionate genealogist needs.
For those of you who don't know Enduring Legacy Genealogy has been partnering with the USGenWeb Archive to photograph local cemeteries.
As of this article we have published three full cemeteries on the Internet. The most recent are:
Even if you do not have ancestors in these areas you may find it interesting to look through these. ELG is accepting volunteers to help with the process of photographing cemeteries. No matter where you are, we challenge you to take a walk, take your camera with you and when you are done feel free to e-mail them to us to have uploaded to the Internet. If you are the one who took the photograph your name will be included as contributor on the Internet when the photos are uploaded.
We thank our first contributors to this project who helped with the York Springs Lutheran Cemetery.
Earlier this month ELG announced a partnership with volunteers at USGenWeb Archives. The goal of this project is to make available tombstone photograph collections of local Adams and York County, PA cemeteries. Such volunteer provided online cemetery records have been key in my research for my ancestors and I'm glad to be contributing to the overall effort. On 20 Sep 2009 the first wave of this project was officially released in connection with Kathy Francis of the York County, PA USGenWeb Archive. Bott's Graveyard was the first cemetery to be uploaded. You can browse the photos here: http://usgwarchives.net/pa/york/1picts/cemeteries/botts-wmanchester/botts.htm
After seeing the inefficiency of the first version of the Enduring Legacy Genealogy website from late 2007-2008 I scrapped it and made this blog a companion to my new website. I have admired genealogical blogs from other enthusiasts for some time. The AncestryInsider & Renee's Genealogy Blog were my primary inspirations. With the increased popularity of my services and demand for genealogical advice, news, and tips, Enduring Legacy Genealogy brings you our own WebLog (blog). Content may include select genealogical news from areas such as Pennsylvania, Baltimore, the north eastern United States, Germany and Ireland. My favorite topics include new genealogy technology, what is new with FamilySearch websites, and genealogy volunteerism.
UPDATE: August 2011. The official website of Enduring Legacy Genealogy has moved entirely into this blog.
